kapgar

Call me a relic, call me what you will...

There are some things I truly hate about the summer. The biggest of which is the fact that it seems that we have something planned every weekend. So far as I can tell, our lives are pretty well "on reserve" through the end of August.

The reason why this is such a big deal is that now we can't do spontaneous things we find out about at the last second. For example, this coming Saturday there will be a program hosted by the Geneva History Center called "Wooden Bats & Iron Men." It's a baseball game between the Geneva Rovers and the Midway Marauders.

The catch is that it's not your standard, everyday baseball game. This is old school here. They play by 19th century rules and use the uniforms, equipment, and lingo from the era. Here's the text slug from the flyer we received in the mail...

The Rovers & Marauders play by the rules of 1858, when men were men and gloves were for sissies. Learn the wildly different rules and cheer on the Rovers as they defend the honor of our fair city.

This is about the coolest thing for a guy like me who loves not just baseball but 19th century history (I've always been a freak for Civil War history). And, yet, we've got plans for most of the day on Saturday. I hope I can find video of it all somewhere.

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): I like when people in a customer service sort of role take a little time to get to know you or have some fun with their job. Katie and I took her car in yesterday for an emissions test. After it was all over, the guy who was helping us said, "Well, I'd tell you both to have a nice day and drive safe, but screw it. Go out there, drive erratically, and hit some people!"

Katie: "SWEET!"

Service guy: "Yeah! And when the cops pull you over, blame it on a few too many at the beer garden!"

Me: "Because we all know that overconsumption of liquor is a viable excuse for vehicular homicide!"

Service guy: "You know it!"

I like that he felt comfortable enough to know he could joke around with us a bit. Made for a fun afternoon... at an emissions testing station of all places. Who'd'a thunk it?

Sum, sum, sum, sum, summertime...

Hey all! Happy Saturday to you.

Nothing much going on here right now, so let me direct you over to Secondhand Tryptophan where yours truly is guest blogging as part of Karl's Summer of Love.

I was nervous as hell doing this guest post, but it seems to have gone pretty well. So if you have a moment, drop on by and check things out. Talk atcha soon!

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): I don't care what the naysayers say, Katie and I loved The Dark Knight. Awesome! And Heath was fantastic. It's not just hype. Seriously.

Batman...

In one hour, Katie and I will be here...

Yes, we both have the day off and we're spending part of it to go see The Dark Knight.

However, I thought it was merely luck that we had a day off that coincided with the release of the film. I was under the impression that somebody at Katie's work wanted to swap days with her for whatever reason and so I took the day off to spend with her.

As it turns out, Katie had been planning this for weeks. She requested the shift change at work so she could go to the dentist and we could also go together to see the film as early as possible (without it being an overnight showing).

How awesome is my wife?

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): Well, they're both still films. Two weeks ago, I had no idea that the Broadway musical Mamma Mia! was being made into a film. Now, with all the ads I've seen and heard -- actually a greater number of them in the last week than for The Dark Knight if you can believe it -- I'm sick to death of it. I can't hear the song "Mamma Mia" without cringing. It's freakin' everywhere! Literally every other commercial break on every network we tune into has a trailer for it. I'm going nuts over here!

Uh-oh, let's go...

Intellectual Property Rights (regarding music; from Wikipedia):
Intellectual property rights are a bundle of exclusive rights over creations of the mind, both artistic and commercial. The former is covered by copyright laws, which protect creative works such as books, movies, music, paintings, photographs, and software and gives the copyright holder exclusive right to control reproduction or adaptation of such works for a certain period of time.

I studied Intellectual Property Rights (also known as "IPR") back in grad school because it was a big deal regarding my field of study, which was communication and media. We talked constantly about IPR, copyright, trademarks, copylefts (yes, that's a real term), and what constituted a violation of each of these.

Basically, what we learned is that when someone else tries to use an artist's IPR for personal gain or to deny said artist from their right to gain material wealth through illegal acquisition or distribution of material, the artist has the right to recoup losses (read "sue your pants off").

And now, knowing what I do, I have to ask... why is Prince being such a prick?

Yes, I'm referring to the artist formerly known as Prince Rogers Nelson, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, and TAFKAP. The guy who sings classics like "Little Red Corvette," "1999," and "Nothing Compares 2 U."

Now, Prince is claiming all kinds of IPR and copyright infringement is happening to his property over on YouTube (I apologize if this is old news to many of you. I only recently realized this is affecting someone I know).

At this year's Coachella festival, Prince performed the song "Creep." Some fans, who had never heard him play the song before, captured it using the video modes of their cellphones and/or digital cameras and posted it to YouTube. Prince, in an effort to protect himself and his performance, claimed copyright/IPR infringement and had YouTube pull the video.

The catch here? The reason that nobody had ever heard him perform the song before and why they were so excited and wanted to capture it is because IT'S NOT HIS SONG! The song "Creep" was written by and rights to it owned by the band Radiohead. Thom Yorke, lead singer of Radiohead, found out that Prince had performed the song and, when guitarist Ed O'Brien tried to watch the video on YouTube, he was denied access to it. Yorke was none too happy claiming that rights to the song belong to the band and not to Prince and, therefore, TAFKAP has no right to block the song.

I'm not entirely sure how this one panned out as yet.

In another case, mother, blogger, two-time GBBMC participant, and all-around LOLcat lover Stephanie Lenz, also known as Edenza of So Anyway..., is going to court this Friday to defend herself and her toddler son, Holden, against charges of copyright infringement being brought by, as p2pnet is calling him, "his Purpleness" and Vivendi Universal.

Wanna know what she did? She took a 29-second video of her son bopping along in the family kitchen to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." 29 FRIGGING SECONDS of which the audio quality is so bad, you cannot even tell it's the Prince song for the first five to eight seconds. Now she has to defend her "illegal" actions, with the help of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) thankfully, in court.

If anybody were making money off that rightfully belonged to Prince in either case, then I might be able to see Prince's side of the argument. However, he is neither the copyright holder of Radiohead's song, nor is Edenza trying to make money off the video she posted. She thought it was funny. It is. I've seen the video. P2Pnet has it on the linked page above.

If it was the full version of the song at an audio level such that people could capture it and save it to their computers or iPods in lieu of buying the real song themselves, Prince would have a case. Here he does not. Why not sue me for using three or four words of lyrics from his songs in the title of this post? That's about all the validity this case has.

I want to know what crawled up Prince's ass sideways and is now permanently roosting there. To paraphrase Ferris Bueller (please don't sue me, Matthew Broderick), "If you were to shove a lump of coal up Prince's ass, in two weeks you'd have diamonds (and pearls)."

HA! See what I did there? Oh never mind.

Good luck, Edenza. We're pulling for you.

[Correction thanks to Avitable... This Friday, Edenza, along with help from the EFF, is taking Universal Vivendi to court saying that they violated her legally protected fair use of the song with claims of copyright infringement.]

Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): This was supposed to be part of yesterday's Snippet Wednesday, but I forgot. Now I've found an article to go with it.

Nestle's Spinach Artichoke Chicken Lean Pockets are being recalled because something went wonky at the processing plant and some of them wound up with bits of plastic in them. Oh yay!

Somewhere, a falsetto'd Jim Gaffigan is chiming in, "Recalled Pockets."

Hey now, you're an all star...

Hey all! Welcome to Snippet Wednesday #7. Buckle up!

Ninja
Just as I was clearing out the junk mail in my Gmail account, I caught a subject line that actually might've made me read had I not already known that the sender was a notorious spammer. It said "Ninja attacks in NYC's Times Square." How cool! Hey, I've got tons of NYC friends. Anybody witness or been victim of ninja attacks?? Any pictures??

Yeah, that's what I thought. Bummer. No cool stuff ever happens.

Stars
For the first time in my life, I actually watched (and listened to) the MLB All-Star Game. I have no idea why I committed myself to that whole damn thing. It was 15 freakin' innings after all. I started it with a friend after work, then continued it on the radio while I drove home, and then Katie flipped it on as we were trying to fall asleep. I can't imagine having been a fan watching it in person in NYC where it didn't end until 1:30 or so in the morning. Time to call in dead to work.

Poehlerized
So Amy Poehler is being considered for a leading role in the new spinoff of The Office set to debut after the Super Bowl in February, eh? Could be interesting. I'm not a huge Poehler fan, but she could be good. Personally, I'd love to see her real-life husband, Will Arnett, in the show. Maybe just in wildly inappropriate cameos like David Koechner currently does in the primary version of the show as Todd Packer.

Desnudo
Apparently, Megan Fox wants to star in a movie in which she's naked 100% of the time. I don't see any problems with this. Do you?

Windmill
This is the coolest thing in the world (well, until the next coolest thing comes along)... a Lego windmill! Two feet tall and it actually works on battery power. Sadly, I doubt we'll see any of these dotting the sides of the highways. That would be a lot of Legos. But I want one!

Knighted
For those of you following me on Twitter, you already know, but Katie and I got our tickets to see The Dark Knight at 9:15 a.m. on Friday on our local IMAX screen. I can't remember how long it has been since I've geeked out this much. Well, probably last night, but still.